Former UK Bureaucrat Whines About People Happily Looking At Mobile Phones Rather Than Fearfully Spying On Everyone Else

from the wtf? dept

Yes, lots of people whine about the fact that so many people out in public these days seem to have their heads down in their mobile phones, but as we've pointed out before, things aren't necessarily so different than in the past: However, Pauline Neville-Jones, the former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee in the UK, has taken this form of anti-smartphone luddism to new and even more ridiculous levels, claiming that all these people looking at their mobile phones or listening to music/podcasts in public are a public nuisance, because they're not watching out for terrorists. Really.

“I think being alert is very important. I am alarmed by the number of people I see wandering along the street entirely engaged in their mobile telephones and with their ears plugged into music and they are not aware of their surroundings. You need to be aware of your surroundings,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “You do have to take some personal responsibility.”

In short: you lowly citizens, do not enjoy your life, but live in fear and report on any suspicious looking neighbors. I mean, while there have been terrorist attacks in the UK, it's not as if they're a regular occurrence. And living life in fear is hardly a productive way to live in a modern society.

However, Neville-Jones is pretty sure that living in fear is the best possible idea. Because she also encouraged the UK government to issue terrorist warnings more frequently, even if the evidence wasn't very strong:

She said the authorities had to take any intelligence seriously: “If you have got a piece of information, it may be difficult for you to assess it, you may not be comfortable about having a broader picture – part of the problem with intelligence is it can be fragmentary – but it’s a very bold government or policeman who chooses not to take precautions in such circumstances.

“I think the population on the whole would prefer them to be cautious and occasionally have closed something that it turned out wasn’t necessary – but how do we know – rather than take the risk of exposing people to dangers on which they have information, even if it’s not complete and on which they can’t necessarily totally rely.”

Of course, when you live in a world where bogus "terrorist threat" warnings come out all too often, it does the exact opposite of what Neville-Jones actually appears to want. That is, it makes people no longer trust the system at all, and become cynical about it. Wouldn't it be a lot smarter to explain to people that the real risk of dying in a terrorist attack is basically nil?

Filed Under: fear, fearmongering, mobile phones, pauline neville-jones, terror, terrorism, uk

Ted Koppel Writes Entire Book About How Hackers Will Take Down Our Electric Grid... And Never Spoke To Any Experts

from the fudmongering dept

Famous TV news talking head Ted Koppel recently came out with a new book called Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath. The premise, as you may have guessed, is that we're facing a huge risk that "cyberattackers" are going to take down the electric grid, and will be able to take it down for many weeks or months, and the US government isn't remotely prepared for it. Here's how Amazon describes the book:

Investigative reporting that reads like fiction - or maybe I just wish it was fiction. In Lights Out, Ted Koppel flashes his journalism chops to introduce us to a frightening scenario, where hackers have tapped into and destroyed the United States power grids, leaving Americans crippled. Koppel outlines the many ways our government and response teams are far from prepared for an un-natural disaster that won't just last days or weeks - but months - and also shows us how a growing number of individuals have taken it upon themselves to prepare. Whether you pick up this book to escape into a good story, or for a potentially potent look into the future, you will not be disappointed.

The book also has quotes ("blurbs" as they're called) from lots of famous people -- nearly all of whom are also famous TV news talking heads or DC insiders who have a long history of hyping up "cyber" threats. But what's not on the list? Anyone with any actual knowledge or experience in actual computer security, especially as it pertains to electric grids.

Want to know how useful the book actually is? All you really need to read is the following question and answer from an interview Koppel did with CSO Online:

Did you interview penetration testers who have experience in the electric generation/transmission sector for this book?

No, I did not.

Also in that interview, Koppel admits that he hasn't heard anything from actual information security professionals (though he admits he may have missed it since he's been on the book tour). But, still, if you're writing an entire book with a premise based entirely on information security practices, you'd think that this would be the kind of thing you'd do before you write the book, rather than after it's been published. Instead, it appears that Koppel just spoke to DC insiders who have a rather long history of totally overhyping "cyberthreats" -- often for their own profits. In another interview, Koppel insists that he didn't want to be spreading rumors -- but doesn't explain why he didn't actually speak to any technical experts.

“Going in, what I really wanted to do was make sure I wasn’t just spreading nasty rumors,” said Koppel in a phone interview.... “After talking to all these people, I satisfied my own curiosity that this not just a likelihood but almost inevitable.”

"All these people"... who apparently did not include any computer security experts. Koppel claims that this isn't a priority because Homeland Security doesn't want to "worry" the American public:

“The public would have to understand it’s a plan that will work but if you don’t have a plan, that can be more worrisome. I just hope it becomes part of the national conversation during the presidential campaign.”

What?!? Homeland Security doesn't want to worry the American public? Which Homeland Security is he talking about? The one that manhandles the American public every time they go to an airport? The same one that is constantly fearmongering about "cyber attacks" and "cyber Pearl Harbor"? Is Koppel living in some sort of alternative universe?

Is there a chance that hackers could take down electric grids and it would cause serious problems? Sure. Anything's possible, but somehow we've gotten along without a single incident ever of hackers taking down any part of the electrical grid to date. And most actual information security professionals don't seem to think it is a "likely" scenario as Koppel claims. The whole thing seems to fit into the usual category of cyberFUD from political insiders who are salivating over the ability to make tons and tons of money by peddling fear.

Is it important to protect infrastructure like the electric grids? Yes. Should we be aware of actual threats? Absolutely. But overhyping the actual threat doesn't help anyone and just spreads fear... and that fear is quickly lapped up by people who will use it to profit for themselves.

Filed Under: cyberattacks, cybersecurity, electric grid, fearmongering, information security, ted koppel

House Intel Committee Releases Fact-Free Fearmongering About Impact Of Snowden Revelations

from the the-smearing-of-ed-snowden,-brought-to-you-by-mike-rogers dept

House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Mike Rogers and his Democractic counterpart Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger published a press release today touting a classified Defense Department report alleging that Edward Snowden’s leaks—and by proxy, stories published by news organizations—threaten national security and "are likely to have lethal consequences for our troops in the field."

Before going any further, let’s remember what the Washington Post reported last month about Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper:

Clapper has said repeatedly in public that the leaks did great damage, but in private he has taken a more nuanced stance. A review of early damage assessments in previous espionage cases, he said in one closed-door briefing this fall, found that dire forecasts of harm were seldom borne out.

Now go back and read the press release closely. No specific examples are given, and you will notice virtually every sentence includes the word "could"—meaning real damage hasn’t actually occurred, they are just saying it potentially could happen. And of course, the actual report is secret, so the two Congressmen are able to say whatever they wish about it, and it can’t be independently verified. (Rep. Mike Rogers also has a long history of not telling the truth.)

We’ve seen this same scene over and over again in the past decade, and the results are always the same: the government serially exaggerates damage to national security in an attempt to make sure newsworthy stories are not published or to villify whistleblowers.

When WikiLeaks started publishing State Department cables in 2010, the administration was claiming in the media that WikiLeaks would have "blood on its hands." But then it turned out, as Reuters reported, in private the government believed only "that a mass leak of diplomatic cables caused only limited damage" and that "the administration felt compelled to say publicly that the revelations had seriously damaged American interests in order to bolster legal efforts to shut down the WikiLeaks website and bring charges against the leakers."

The Bush White House said the same thing—"you will have blood on your hands"—to New York Times editors before they published their original NSA warrantless wiretapping stories in 2005 and 2006. Bush's Attorney General later threatened to prosecute the New York Times under the Espionage Act. Similar statements were made about Dana Priest’s investigation of CIA secret prisons for the Washington Post. The damage of course never materialized, and the both Priest and the New York Times reporters went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.

This is a tried and true tactic used by the US government made famous by Richard Nixon. Back in 1971, the Nixon administration told the US Supreme Court that if the New York Times continued to publish the Pentagon Papers it would result in "grave and immediate damage to the United States." The man who made those arguments, Solicitor General Erwin Griswold, later wrote in the Washington Post, "I have never seen any trace of a threat to the national security from the publication." He called on the public to be skeptical of "national security" claims made using secrecy.

New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson probably said it best when she flatly stated last year, "No story about details of government secrets has come near to demonstrably hurting the national security in decades and decades."

Virtually any time newspapers print something the government doesn’t like, they will claim it hurts national security without providing any details or proof. This is standard operating procedure for them, and news organizations should not be scared to push back on such claims, without direct evidence to the contrary.

Republished from the Freedom of the Press Foundation

Filed Under: defense department, dod, dutch ruppersberger, ed snowden, fearmongering, house intelligence committee, mike rogers

Press Suckered By Anti-Google Group's Bogus Claim That Gmail Users Can't Expect Privacy

from the no-expectation-of-accuracy dept

Okay, so as a bunch of folks have been sending over today, there's been a bit of a furor over a press release pushed out by Consumer Watchdog, a hilariously ridiculous group that has decided that Google is 100% pure evil. The "story" claims that Google has admitted in court that there is no expectation of privacy over Gmail. This is not actually true -- but we'll get to that. This story is a bit complex because the claims in most of the news coverage about this are simply wrong -- but I still think Google made a big mistake in making this particular filing. So, first, let's explain why the coverage is completely bogus trumped up bullshit from Consumer Watchdog, and then we'll explain why Google still shouldn't have made this filing.

First off, you may recall Consumer Watchdog from previous stunts such as a putting together a hilariously misleading and almost 100% factually inaccurate video portrayal of Eric Schmidt, which was all really part of an effort to sell more copies of its founder's book (something the group flat out admitted to us in an email). They're not a consumer watchdog site -- they're a group that makes completely hogwash claims to try to generate attention on a campaign to attack Google.

The press release from Consumer Watchdog fits along its typical approach to these things: take something totally out of context, put some hysterical and inaccurate phrasing around it, dump an attention-grabbing headline on it and send it off to the press. In this case, it claimed that Google had said in a court filing that you have no expectation of privacy with Gmail. That got a bunch of folks in the press to bite with wildly inaccurate headlines:

• CNET: Google filing says Gmail users have no expectation of privacy
• Time: Google Says Gmail Users Have ‘No Legitimate Expectation of Privacy’
• The Guardian: Google: Gmail users shouldn't expect email privacy
• Gizmodo: Google: Non-Gmail Users Have No Legitimate Expectation of Privacy
• Huffington Post: Google: Email Users Can't Legitimately Expect Privacy When Emailing Someone On Gmail
• Business Insider: GOOGLE: If You Send To Gmail, You Have 'No Legitimate Expectation Of Privacy'

The first three of those headlines are simply flat-out factually incorrect. I mean, not even close, and it's fairly incredible that those come from the three more "established" or "mainstream" news publications. The last three are slightly more correct, but still completely miss the point. The best debunking of these claims so far comes from Nilay Patel at the Verge who breaks down the details. The filing, which is from over a month ago, is a response to an absolutely, monumentally bogus class action lawsuit filed against Google, arguing, hilariously, that it's a violation of wiretap laws to put ads next to emails based on the text of those emails. No, seriously.

As Patel points out, first, if you put the argument back into context, it's not even about Gmail users -- as the top three headlines above falsely state. Google is arguing that non-Gmail users are consenting to the fact that when they send an email, the ISPs who receive the email will automatically process them. This should not be controversial. At all. Without that concept email doesn't work. As the filing states (which the folks hyping this ignore):

Non-Gmail users who send emails to Gmail recipients must expect that their emails will be subjected to Google's normal processes as the [email] provider for their intended recipients.

In other words, there's no "there" there. All Google was arguing was that courts have held that if you are using a communication service, there's a perfectly reasonable (in fact, expected) recognition that the service provider will have the right to process some information about that communication. In the context of the case that Google cites, the infamous Smith v. Maryland, the argument is that the business provider is reasonably expected to be able to track the user's activity. That's not controversial. The controversial step that Smith v. Maryland then makes is to argue that because the service provider has a right to that basic information it means that the end user has no expectation of privacy with regards to the government getting access to the same info. That's the problem with Smith v. Maryland -- the failure to recognize that massive difference between me (1) consenting to let my phone company record who I make phone calls to in exchange for the ability to make calls and (2) the expectation that it's okay for the government to collect that very same info without a warrant.

Google's citation of Smith v. Maryland is to make the first half of that argument -- showing that courts recognize the obvious: that when you use a communication service, there are certain aspects of information that you know the service provider is going to have access to. Without that you don't have email, or (realistically speaking) the internet.

So, this is all much ado about nothing.

Except... I still think it was a mistake for Google to use this legal argument, and I'm somewhat surprised Google's legal team let this go through in place. First, Google does not need this citation to make this point. There are other cases that can make this point effectively without touching on the government spying aspect. But, the real reason why this is a mistake is that Google has given fairly strong indications in recent statements that it's willing to fight back against certain government requests for user info (and that it's done so in the past). In those cases, the government is absolutely going to cite Smith v. Maryland as its evidence that users have no expectation of privacy in their communications and now they'll also point out that Google cited the case approvingly. Google will want to argue that Smith v. Maryland is outdated law and was decided wrongly and/or in a different time under a different technology ecosystem. And this is a very, very strong argument that has a good chance of winning. But the ability of the government to point out that Google has, in other cases, cited the Smith precedent approvingly -- even if it was really only part of the Smith precedent -- could undermine their arguments against Smith in future cases down the road.

Either way: the freakout here is totally manufactured by a bogus, laughable group that is spreading ideas that would do massive harm to the internet based on a near total ignorance of how things work. Yes, people are on edge given the NSA revelations, but this "gotcha" is no "gotcha" at all. It's just more evidence of the sheer duplicity of Consumer Watchdog. That said, it was still short-sighted for Google to make this claim in a filing. They didn't need the citation, and while it may help them win this ridiculous class action lawsuit, it may come back to bite them down the road in more important cases.

Filed Under: 3rd party doctrine, consumer watchdog, email, fearmongering, government, hype, journalism, privacy, smith v. maryland, surveillance
Companies: consumer watchdog, google

How To Debunk A Fact-Free Fox News Fearmongering Piece About New Video Game

from the a-few-options dept

I'm admittedly late to the game in discussing the (unintentionally) hilarious Fox News fearmongering attack on the new video game BulletStorm, that (among other things) quotes someone suggesting that it will lead children to rape women because certain actions in the games (which includes no sex) include "sexual" names. For example, shooting someone's torso off is called "topless," while killing a bunch of enemies in one shot is called a "gang bang." A bunch of folks submitted this story last week, but I only had a chance to read it now, and... wow. It's a "classic" in the almost totally fact-less genre of how video games will lead children to their doom.

Since I'm so late to the story, rather than directly going through all of the laughable (or downright false) claims directly, I'll simply point to three of the best debunkings that were done to show you how to properly debunk this type of thing:

• There's the straightforward debunking, done by folks like Winda Benedetti at MSNBC, which calmly and rationally responds to many of the claims that Fox News reporter John Brandon made in the original review (or quoted people to make). For example, Brandon quotes Carole Lieberman, a psychologist, who claims that "The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games." The only problem? As video games have become more popular, rape rates have gone down.
  
  
• If that's not enough of a debunking, John Walker, over at the RockPaperShotgun blog went with a dig deeper debunking, in which he contacted folks quoted by Brandon in the article, and discovered (surprise, surprise) that Brandon appears to have selectively chosen his quotes in at least some of the cases, to make "experts" say something quite different than what they really said. Walker got the full email interview that Brandon did with Billy Pidgeon, a video game analyst with M2 Research, which Brandon uses to suggest that the game won't sell well, since people aren't interested in such violence. But that's not what Pidgeon said at all. In fact, Brandon mixed and matched parts of Pidgeon's answer to have him "say" something quite different than what he actually said. On top of that, Walker's research shows the way that Fox News approached this story, asking incredibly leading questions.
  
  Update: In the comments, Patrick points out that Walker has posted another "dig deeper" debunking of Carole Lieberman's "research" to attempt to prove her claims. It's a long and thorough takedown.
  
  
• And, finally, we have the absolutely epic takedown debunk, as done by Eddy at Botchweed, where he did a giant image of the entire Fox News piece, overlayed with his own commentary (including a chart showing the rape rates declining next to the quote mentioned above). Here's just a snippet of the image, but you should see the whole thing:

So there you go. When someone like Fox News publishes a ridiculously wrong and misleading attack on video games, three perfect templates for debunking.

Filed Under: bulletstorm, debunking, fearmongering, fox news, video games